


Wants and Needs

by hanyou_elf



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanyou_elf/pseuds/hanyou_elf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wants and Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for whisper2ascream's prompt on lj's hoodie_time:   
> _You can't always get what you want.  
>  You can't always get what you want.  
> But if you try sometimes, you might find...  
> you get what you need._

**Title:** Wants and Needs  
 **Author:** hanyou-elf  
 **Characters:** Dean, Sammy, Impala  
 **Genre/Pairing** Gen; No pairing, implied or otherwise  
 **Rating:** PG-13, for language  
 **Word Count:** ~1,100  
 **Spoilers:** Through aired episodes of season seven  
 **Warnings:** Angst, Emotional exhaustion  
 **Summary:** You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need.  
 **Notes:** Written for hoodie time’s .challenge 6 for whisper2ascream’s prompt #112  
 **Disclaimers** Dean and Sam aren’t mine, if they were they would never leave the Impala or wear shirts. 

The Impala turns over with a rough cough. She hasn’t been on the road in much longer than he wanted; fucking Leviathan. He demands a lot of his baby. And she has never disappointed him. He wants to keep her forever running, chasing his father’s goals. He wants to protect the civilians. And to do that, he wants to keep her running forever. But she’s getting old. 

And he’s pretty sure she knows he was driving something else. Before Dick fucking Roman, the only time he didn’t drive her was when he was injured and couldn’t drive, or she needed to be on the down low during a hunt. All of it rare. He misses his girl when she’s not with him. He wants to take care of her, wants to have the safety of his baby at his beck and call. 

She’s home. She’s a tool that he can wield with both precision and accuracy. And as long as he takes care of her, she’ll never let him down. And he knows how to tend to his baby girl. He loves the sleek paint. The throaty growl when she starts. The purr when she’s humming down a highway, obeying his whims. He loves her; she’s as much a part of his family as Sammy. As Bobby and dad were. He feels like he should build a memorial to her, beside dad.

The worse part of it all though is that the Impala is the only thing that Sammy can count on as normal. With everything that’s going wrong with him, with all of the things that are driving him apart- the hallucinations and the confusion and the desperate need for a routine, Dean’s baby girl was the only thing that he could count on day in and day out.

He wants the old days. He wants the days when he and Sammy sat together in the front seat, taking turns at night sleeping in the cramped but familiar backseat. He wants the smell of warm leather, gun oil, and spoiled laundry. He wants the smell of the open road without the heavy tint of hell fire and decay. He wants the comfort of the past. He wants the time when the only things that he had to worry about were the open road, the potential of Sammy’s gassiness, and the miles between where they were and where they needed to be. 

But he doesn’t get to have that. He wasn’t strong enough to protect her. He doesn’t get her familiarity when he’s too weak to keep her. He couldn’t protect her or Sammy. And because he was weak, he’s lost her; except for these stolen moments with her. He’s only got the time it takes to get from Frank’s safe house to the secure holding spot. Until the Leviathan are gone, he won’t get to drive her again. Not if he wants to protect Sammy.

He doesn’t even have Sammy with him right now. The one thing that he does have is his car. His baby that he’s going to put away in protected storage and hope that she’s protected. If it were Sammy, Dean would have faith that he could protect himself, given the best protections he has to offer. He knows that Sammy could fight to hold things off until Dean got there to protect him. But his baby, his baby won’t be able to do anything to protect herself. Dean will have to carve the necessary protective sigils into the shell of the car, hidden away where they couldn’t be seen but would be incredibly effective. He couldn’t ruin the car’s look. 

He sighs to himself when he pulls into the driveway to the storage facility. This is the last five minutes he’s going to have driving her until he and Sammy can get rid of the Leviathan. “Baby,” he says softly, his voice is hoarse with misuse and growled with disuse. “I promise to make this all better. Full tune-up and everything.” 

There’s no answer, which he expected. Instead, there’s the growl of the engine beneath him and the rushing of wind through opened windows. He knows that no matter how much he loves his baby he has to let her go for now. She can’t stay with him, not like this. He won’t lose her to the Leviathan. And he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to rebuild her again. 

He wants his girl, but he can’t have her right now.

It takes him a few hours, but finally his girl is parked, safely hidden in the back of a storage garage registered to a chick, hidden away beneath a tarp and random things stuck into the garage as cover. Dirt has been blown into the garage, giving it all the appearance of dusted age. God, all he can do is hope that it and the sigils carved into his girl will protect her enough. 

He closes the garage door and turns to the too small Camaro he’s cheating on his girl with. It’s not even sleekly painted with its rust spots and dirt browns. He heaves a sigh before he climbs into the backseat behind Sammy, who had followed a couple hours behind him, and lies down with his head against the door behind Sammy and his feet pressed against the other door. His long body is contorted to fit, and he’s uncomfortable as hell after driving all day. He’s stiff and his body hurts, but he won’t admit it. Not until they can find a hotel and just crash. He curls a hand beneath his head and the other over his eyes. 

He can depend on Sammy for a few hours until he gets them to a safe haven.

He doesn’t expect to stop quite so soon and pushes himself up on the passenger’s side. Sammy has them pulled over in the parking lot of a small no tell motel. Dean closes his eyes and pushes the door open. Sammy doesn’t get their rooms anymore. He gets confused and lost in his mind, which is understandable when Lucifer’s running commentary in his ear. There are times that Dean doesn’t understand how Sammy can have any kind of normal conversation with anyone. 

And what makes it worse is that Dean doesn’t know how to make Sammy focus beyond the pain of reality. He understands the special kind of suffering that Hell creates and forces on a person. He knows that Sammy had a special kind of Hell with Lucifer and Michael. But beyond physical pain he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He can’t cut Sammy every time another cut heals. And he can’t punch Sammy around a little when he notices that he’s getting lost in his head.

One day he’ll find a way to get Lucifer out of Sammy’s head. He’ll find a way to get rid of the Leviathan. He’ll get his girl back. Until then though, he has to focus on making sure Sammy is taken care of. That he’s going to be safe and protected, even when he’s not in his right mind. It’s not what he wants but he has to settle for this, what he needs.


End file.
